Wednesday, 22 February 2017

Hello everyone, and welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. This week, we are announcing our winners of Challenge Thirty-One. The winner of the £15 prize to spend at Chocolate Baroque is Jan, whose project was drawn by Random.org as the overall winner. Congratulations, Jan, we hope that you enjoy your prize.

Please email Lesley on lesley@chocolatebaroque.com so that she can organise your voucher. You can also display our winner's badge on your blog. Details of how to obtain the badge can be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page.

The Top Three this month have been chosen by the Design Team, who have, as always, had a really tough time, choosing from such a wonderful selection of artwork. The Top Three in no particular order are:

Congratulations ladies, you can display the Top Three badge on your blogs. Details of how to obtain the badge can be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page. Well done to everyone who entered, and we hope that you will join in with the current challenge. You can find the details here.

We have some more inspiration from the Design Team to share with you this week:

Marga has created a beautiful card incorporating foliage, stamping in both shades of green and adding copper highlights. the subtle splodges of turquoise and white on her background add great depth.

Anne's butterfly shrine is so pretty with the stamped foliage, and the co-ordinating die cut branches. The focal butterfly forms a beautiful centrepiece to her design.

Vronnie's stunning tag allows the Kingfisher to shine on the textured background with coppery accents:

Magda's scenic card would make a brilliant masculine Birthday card. The Brushos have created a fabulous riot of colour in the background:

We hope that these projects will inspire you to create something for the challenge yourselves using the current colour swatch.

We will be back in two weeks' time with another post, and more inspiration from the Design Team, but until then, we look forward to seeing lots more entries from you. If you have any questions, and cannot find the answers on the blog pages, please send a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this post; you will see it after the comments section.

Wednesday, 15 February 2017

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new challenge on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you for yor visits to the blog over the past month, and for your lovely comments. We really appreciate your support, and love reading what you have to say. We will be announcing the winner of Challenge Thirty-One next week, so if you entered last month's challenge, be sure to check out the blog post, to see if you are the winner of our prize.

As a reminder to those of you who have visited our blog before, and for anyone who is new to the blog, our challenges are monthly, based on an inspirational photo and a colour swatch. A new challenge is launched on the third Wednesday of every month. You can use any medium to create your projects; inks, paints, pens, pencils, etc., as long as you stick to the colours from the colour swatch in your project. We are offering a monthly prize of £15 to spend on Chocolate Baroque stamps to one lucky winner, who will be selected by Random.org from all of the entrants who have used Chocolate Baroque stamps currently available from the website. We welcome entries incorporating other stamps and images, but they will not be eligible for the prize. All entries will have the chance to be selected as one of our Top Three, and can then display our 'I made the Top Three at Chocolate Baroque' badge on their blogs.

We have a beautiful colour swatch incorporating a metallic option for you this month, including a stunning piece of artwork from Miranda. We will be sharing some fabulous inspiration from the Design Team over the coming weeks. Here is the colour swatch for the new challenge:

The challenge will close at 12.00 p.m. on Tuesday 14th March 2017, and the winner will be announced on Wednesday 22nd March 2017. Here are some projects from the Design Team:

Anne has created a beautiful wreath, using both stamped butterflies, and a pretty embossed butterfly as her focal decoration.

Vronnie has created two lovely cards with Brusho backgrounds. She has used the new Silhouette Grasses stamps to decorate the cards, and they could be useful for so many occasions:

Claire's pretty tag is full of vibrant colour, and her acetate Steampunk Butterfly has been glazed from behind with inks:

Thank you girls for your inspiration using the new challenge colours. We hope that they will inspire you to create something yourselves for the challenge. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the challenge blog team. You can get in touch by sending a private message, details are at the end of this post; below the comments section.

We hope that you enjoy the new challenge and look forward to seeing your projects.

Wednesday, 8 February 2017

Hello everyone, and welcome to the final week of Challenge Thirty-One on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you so much for your visits and lovely comments throughout the month, we really appreciate your support, and love reading what you have to say. We hope that you have been enjoying the current challenge. There is still plenty of time to enter, and to be in with a chance of winning a £15 voucher to spend at Chocolate Baroque. You can add your entries to the link in this post.

This week, we are taking a look at some of the entries we have received so far.

Kate's pretty floral card incorporates background stamping from another one of our stamp sets. The tulips look so fresh, and are coloured beautifully:

Carole has used the same stamp to create both the soft background and vibrant main element. creating a lovely card design:

Shelagh's card is all one layer, but with clever pencil shading looks very three dimensional:

Joan has created a lovely floral meadow scene on her clean and simple style card, using multi-coloured inks:

Annie's card incorporates the caught in crystal technique for her stunning background, and this showcases the lovely fairy and butterfly so well:

Jan has created a beautiful scene on her tag, with the pretty flower and butterfly as a centrepiece. The graduated colours work really well:

This month, it is Asha's turn to tell you a little bit about herself, and you can learn more about our lovely Design Team member from Portugal.

I joined the Chocolate Baroque Design Team in March 2014....and to this day I am amazed by the talent, support and friendship I find here. If there is a dream team- this is it. For me, being here is a dream come true.

My love affair with Chocolate Baroque began when I bought my first stamp sheet in September 2012. It is called The Gift of Christmas. There is an image on this set which made my heart skip a beat; the silhouette of a cat and dog looking at a Christmas tree.

My cat Xiara passed away on 1st September that year and the scene depicted by that stamp is my most treasured memory of Christmas at home with my dogs and cats around the tree. Chocolate Baroque has immortalised it in a stamp! It comes as no surprise that of all the lovely stamps by Chocolate Baroque, The Gift of Christmas is still my favourite.

Now bear in mind I am not an artistic person, I struggled to get a C- in art at school.... and that only happened twice, by accident! So when you ask me how do I do it- trust me when I say "I don't know, it just happened!"

What I lack in artistic flair, I compensate with a wild and vivid imagination, often imagining myself to be more creative than I really am! My inspiration comes from all over the place- the colour of a flower, the smell of rain, my dog snoring, falling leaves...it always starts with something. Best of all, there's a Chocolate Baroque stamp that fits the bill.

My day job requires mr to be focused, meticulous and methodical. I work in the judicial system, which often (and inconveniently), gets in the way of my crafting endeavours. In stark contrast, my craft room is a place of chaos and madness. However some of my favourite pieces were born here under pressure; photographed and blogged while the ink was still wet. That pretty much sums up how I craft.

Thank you so much Asha, for your words, it was so interesting to read about you, and to get to know you a little better.

We will be back next week with a brand new challenge, but we hope to see lots more entries from you in the meantime. If you have any questions, but cannot find the answers on the blog pages, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this post; you will see it after the comments section.

Wednesday, 1 February 2017

Hello everyone and welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We hope that you are enjoying the current challenge and the inspiration provided by the Design Team. For those of you visiting the blog for the first time, do check out all of the information on the blog, especially the tabs at the top of the page, where you should be able to find all of the answers to your questions. Here is the colour swatch for this month's challenge:

You can find a link to the current challenge here, where you can add your entries at the end of the post. This week we are sharing more inspiration from the Design Team.

Asha has created a floral card using stamps from the Rose Stem Script stamp set. She has also made her own background using a Big Bold Background stamp. The image is coloured beautifully, and there are some lovely touches like the Baker's Twine embellishment to finish off the card:

I have made a canvas for you, using one of my favourite images:

I have written a tutorial so that you can have a go at making this project for yourselves.

Cover the grey board panel with the patterned paper, and once the adhesive is dry, give the paper a rough coat with watered down gesso, to tone down the paper a bit. Using a combination of stencils, cover the background using Bundled Sage for the harlequin stencil, and both Victorian Velvet and Festive Berries for the floral stencil. Edge the panel using Peeled Paint Distress Ink.
Stamp the large butterfly and emboss with clear embossing powder for a crisp image onto white card, or smooth watercolour paper. Colour the image with water based markers and a water brush. Cut out the image, omitting the antennae. Stamp the antennae directly onto the canvas, and adhere the butterfly onto the panel.
Stamp the sentiment to complete your project.

We hope that the projects that we have shown you this week will inspire you to join in with the challenge yourselves. We will be back next week with another post, and more projects for you. If you have any questions, and cannot find the answers on the blog pages, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this post; you will see it after the comments section

Current Challenge

Welcome

A very warm welcome to the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We love crafting and stamping in particular and we love to share and encourage you to have a go.

We hope that you will be inspired to get your stamps inked up, make some time to play and end up with a creation you are proud to share with us all.

Please take a look around - we have tabs at the top that give you lots of information about how our challenges work and if you have any questions at all, please use the Contact page to get in touch and one of the team will get back to you.